Hopefully this list can help you build up your itinerary when you find yourself roaming around the streets of Melbourne. Bear in mind that we only had 4 days and 3 nights in the city so I’m sure you will discover more fun things to do as you get to explore Melbourne on your own. Without much ado, here are some of the few things we got the luxury to do while visiting this artsy city in Australia.

Admire the beautiful chaos at Flinders Street Station

Check out the cool street arts at Hosier Lane

Take the city circle tram and mingle with the locals

Appreciate the wonderful architectures around such as that of the Parliament House

See Melbourne from Naked in the Sky

Stock up on fresh produce at Queen Victoria Market

See the colourful bath houses at Brighton Beach

Have the best pizza in the world at 400 Gradi

Admire the 19th century Neo-Gothic beauty that is St. Paul’s cathedral

Do some serious people watching in Federation Square

Take a leisurely walk along Princess Wharf

Smell some gorgeous flowers at Royal Botanic Gardens

Get lost in the maze of books at State Library of Victoria

Have a fun day at the 100-year old Luna Park

Turn Japanese at Chocolate Buddha

Fancy yourself with a classic porchetta roll at Queen Victoria Market. It could probably kill you from cholesterol, but at least you will die happy! 🙂

Okay, I haven’t been a very good blogger and it’s 4 months (!) since I last updated my blog and this post is long overdue but work has got the better of me and there’s just too much on my plate lately that I haven’t had the time to sit down and write a proper entry, so my sincerest apologies to you all. For now I’ll quit yapping and tell you about our trip to Queenstown to celebrate my daughter’s first birthday last June. You see, we’re not the type who throw grand parties but we would definitely travel in a heartbeat at the slightest chance we got. We’re cool to spend our hard-earned money collecting memories rather than spending it on lavishness or material things so even when our daughter wouldn’t remember it yet, we decided to fly to Queenstown and add pockets of family quality-time to our memory bank instead.

Oh Queenstown! I can’t even begin to describe how awesome this place is. It’s not dubbed as “The World’s Adventure Capital” for nothing. If you’re into some adrenaline-pumping adventure and YOLOing, go pack your gear, rush to the airport and book a one-way ticket to Queenstown! Yes, live here if you must! Think of the stuff you’re lusting to tick-off your bucket list – skydiving, bungy-jumping, gforce paragliding, heli skiing, canyoning, etc. etc. — it’s all found in this adventure-mecca! But since we had a baby in tow, we kept it low-key and just settled for sight-seeing (sayang, mag sky-diving talaga dapat ako, ha-ha!).

For some night-life, you can head over downtown to Minus 5 Degree ice bar. It’s literally the coolest place in Queenstown with controlled temperature ranging up to negative 8 degrees! It’s so cold I only lasted for 20 minutes, yeah the cold did bother me after all. Here you can see ice carvings, shot glass made of ice and even the walls of this bar are made of thick ice. The admission fee comes with some mocktails and cocktails, which aren’t half bad either.

Queenstown did not disappoint on the sight-seeing department as well. From Arrowtown, to Glenorchy to Lake Wanaka – your senses will be filled with picturesque and scenic landscapes enough to fill your camera’s SD card! Be sure to have extra cards handy. Every angle is just so photogenic you cannot take a bad photo here even for an amateur like me.

Below are some of the mediocre shots we gathered, believe me when I say that pictures didn’t give this place justice.

A couple of years ago since we embarked on our great European adventure and it was still one of the best decisions we made despite being a last-minute and spontaneous one . Surely, it left a big dent on our bank account but the memories we made and experiences we collected are definitely unparalleled and worth a lifetime of stories to tell.

To be able to see world wonders such as The Colosseum, The Vatican, Eiffel Tower, The Pantheon, and Leaning Tower of Pisa that we thought we can only read about on textbooks;

to wander around the dream-like cobble-stoned alleys of Rome and drink cups and cups of cappuccino and wolf down slices upon slices of pizza;

to roam around Venice on a water taxi and eat pistachio gelato in spite of the autumn cold;

to know how it feels like to be royals at Chateau de Versailles if only for a day;

to push ourselves into a thick crowd of Mona Lisa hopefuls at the Louvre only to be underwhelmed at the end;

to marvel at the magnificence of Baselica de Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence and climbed up it’s bell tower which was a feat in itself;

to take the stinky and dark Paris metro which felt like a surreal adventure on its own;

to feel extremely blessed to be able to travel around Europe on our meager means,

and the list just goes on and on..

We can opt to buy trendy gadgets with the money we spent on travelling, or fancy watches, designer handbags, top of the line electronics, or new stocks and mutual funds but eventually, the gadgets get obsolete, the watch might get stolen and the stocks can plummet, but the memories we made while conquering the world — they last for a very very long time. Almost until forever.

Hamilton Gardens in New Zealand is by far the loveliest garden we’ve been to and that’s saying a lot considering the multitude of beautiful gardens that mushroom the country. The entire ground is very well-kept and the best part is the access is always free! The site features an impressive 21 gardens representing art, beliefs, lifestyle and traditions of different civilizations or historical garden styles such as the Renaissance, Tudor, Surrealism, Modernist, Chinos Erie, Maori, etc. This garden is such a visual spectacle that it was coined Garden of the Year last 2014. You can also pack lunch or snacks and have some picnic after strolling around.

Penang will always be on our all-time-favorite list of places to visit in Malaysia, and that’s saying something since Malaysia has a plethora of interesting cities, beaches and world-heritage sites to go to. It’s so easy to fall in-love with Penang as you will be spoiled for choices since it is also dubbed as the foodie capital of Malaysia. And if you get a kick out of street arts, murals, graffiti walls, installations and other creative stuff, then Georgetown in Penang is the place to be!

The whole city is like a funky art gallery of some sort and you don’t need to be the artsy type to appreciate its quirkiness and cultural significance.

While exploring the corners and alleyways of this quaint UNESCO world heritage site, you can marvel at different neat pieces by home-grown as well as foreign artists, the most famous of which are the ones by the awesome Lithuanian artist Ernest Zacharevic. It’s really cool so hurry up if you don’t want to miss them as they might soon disappear.

Below are some of the street arts we chanced upon while exploring Georgetown.